2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 has accelerated the development for a competent workforce to power the rising semiconductor industry. Federal and state governments, industries, and academia are joining hands to encourage K-12 participants, specifically high schoolers to pursue careers in STEM. However, these foundational/interest-building programs aiming to engage and educate P-12 participants, face several challenges. Of the many, one of the most prominent challenges is designing these programs for broadening participation in STEM. This challenge is due to the theoretical and practical tensions involved in bridging gaps in exposure and skills required to thrive in a multidisciplinary industry, given the wide range of participant backgrounds. Secondly, it is challenging to create diverse opportunities to help participants see themselves thrive in these futuristic careers. In this paper, we share our approach to navigating these challenges and designing a paid, two-week-long summer program for sixty high school rising juniors and seniors in a midwestern state from the USA. We use three concepts from the Socio-Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) - learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations to bridge the knowledge and skill gaps for the participants and provide them a wide exposure to the career avenues in the field. As we evaluate the success of the program, we aim to find what students learned and what aspects of the activities captured their interests. We employ a basic qualitative research design where we collect students' textual reflections and a photograph of a memorable moment from the activity to perform an abductive thematic analysis. We identified themes where students appreciated the experience, indicated a broadened palette of interests and skills, and realized careers they were inclined towards, thus positively reinforcing the selected block of the SCCT. These findings enable us to discuss how the program design impacted students’ interest in semiconductors, influenced potential industry career pathways, and suggest recommendations for similar future summer program offerings.